


your belief undoes your disbelief

by forochel



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Canon Universe, Happy Ending, Jinpil Bffery, Kim Wonpil-centric, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, One-Sided Kim Wonpil/Park Sungjin - Freeform, Personal Growth, Pining, Unrequited Crush, idolverse, oblivious idiots in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: A chronological series of vignettes: the tale of Wonpil growing out of his feelings for Sungjin and realising that someone else has been there all along.bysine's alternative summary for this is: eat pray love wonpilie
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Park Jinyoung, Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil, Kim Wonpil & Park Jinyoung (GOT7), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 49
Kudos: 170





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: This is a work of FANTASY based on fictional representations of real people. If you are or personally know any of the people tagged up above, please for both our sakes' hit backspace/the x button right the fuck now. 
> 
> I wrote this for many different reasons ... but mostly I watched that one afterparty vlive from early on in 2017 with (1) wonpil fairly throwing himself at sungjin; (2) younghyun redirecting; (3) the legendary choo choo train feeding, and my brain kind of imploded a little from the socio-emotional implications anyone with slash goggles on could spin out.
> 
> the title and epigraph is from Anne Sexton's [Admonitions To A Special Person](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/admonitions-to-a-special-person/).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before anyone comes for me about how I have written jinyoung here, he is my favourite goblin. please see my entire jjp ouevre. 
> 
> also, caveat lector: wonpil IN THIS NARRATIVE is not entirely kind to himself in passing, because ... authorial decision. if this will make you unhappy, perhaps give this a pass. I will say it happens very rarely, though, precisely because of (how I interpret) Wonpil's way of dealing with his internal life.

_To love another is something_  
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall  
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief 

**i.**

It might sort of start when Jinyoung tells him one of the occasions they manage to hang out in person for more than fifteen minutes: "Wonpilie, at some point you have to absolutely stop throwing yourself at Sungjin-hyung. Like, actually one hundred percent stop."

"But," Wonpil says, looking down at his hands, "it's scarier if I stop. Because ... because what if it doesn't make any difference? Then I'll really know."

Jinyoung's face appears in his field of vision, because he is actually a goblin with no concept of personal space when you've become _his people_.

"Yah!" Wonpil jerks back in response, tilting his chin up to get some distance.

"You _have_ your answer," Jinyoung says insistently. Wonpil knows he's being cruel to be kind, but this is — "You have _had_ your answer."

"Jinyoungie," Wonpil says, small and tear-laden. "Stop."

"The day you can flirt with that man again without any intention," says Jinyoung in the manner of one inscribing Wonpil's new year's resolutions on a stone tablet, "and with a light heart, is the day I'll stop nagging." He pauses to give Wonpil a fistful of tissues and a hug. "But I'll stop for now."

**ii.**

He's always liked the beach, and the way the sea merges into the horizon. Wonpil knows that if you sail far enough you'll hit China, but the sea here is such a vast, ruffled silvery-blue mirror under the wide blue skies it's unimaginable.

So: being let loose on the beach and told to run around and have fun, never mind the long-range videocameras, is like having a little holiday. A little release from the pressure cooker this year has already turned into.

Of course, this effectively means that Wonpil is, as the person existing at the intersection of being smallest and younger, vulnerable to conspiracies against his person.

They've all taken turns trying to carry each other, and Wonpil had stumbled a few steps along the surfline under Sungjin's warm, heavy weight pressed against his back, laughing through his terror for all sorts of reasons.

"You're going to crush me," he'd cried, bent over as Sungjin flopped onto him, arms and legs dangling. An absolute deadweight.

Unhelpfully, Sungjin had laughed about how Wonpil was lasting longer than expected, and Wonpil had almost tipped him off into the sand in revenge, stylist rage be damned.

And now the hyungs have just pushed him _and_ Younghyun a little further off-balance towards the surf and are running away, leaving him perched awkwardly in Younghyun's arms.

"Yah!" he's yelling, laughing, feeling free as a bird, his pinions raised against the nipping spring wind. "Running away?"

Underneath him, Younghyun is staggering in the surf, already pivoting to yell at Jae and Sungjin for abandoning him. The two of them are laughing so hard they sound like cawing seagulls, backing away up the beach.

Wonpil clings to his neck, feeling a little sorry underneath all the laughter despite himself; despite Younghyun having been very much a co-conspirator to throw him into the sea not a minute ago. Wonpil can't even _swim_.

He scrunches a little closer to try and take some weight off. "Hyung, let me down. Your arm..."

"Eh?" Younghyun pauses in the middle of shouting at the hyungs for being traitorous traitors and looks up at him, blank in confusion for a moment. "Oh — oh! Okay, wait, let me just — " he edges a few careful steps further up the gentle slope of the beach to drier and leveller land.

He crouches equally carefully down, and Wonpil slides down from his perch to a series of boos from the hyung chorus, who are a safe distance away. Dowoon hovers nearby, arms out, caught between laughter and concern.

"Is your arm okay?" Wonpil enquires. "And your back? Wait, your knee?"

Younghyun waves him off, laughing. "You barely weigh a thing, Pilie."

He swells up in indignation, about to defend — he doesn't know, the density of his bones — when Younghyun punctures the oncoming tirade summarily by picking him up again and giving him a little spin about. Wonpil yelps and clutches at his back.

"Barely," Younghyun says. His grin has a slightly manic edge to it, and is pushing his hollowed cheeks up in a way that makes his eyebags thoroughly defeat the concealer that their stylists had caked on. "A. Thing."

Wonpil squints at him. "You should nap on our way back to Seoul, hyung, you're talking nonsense."

"I," says Younghyun solemnly, "should've just thrown you in."

He starts forward abruptly, and Wonpil takes off running again.

**iii.**

Sungjin-hyung declares defeat five bowls of dumplings in, but Younghyun's still going strong.

Wonpil just ... stares. He should be used to this by now, but every time it's still a startling experience. His eomma, however, is beaming.

"Younghyunie eats so well! Wonpil-ah, you should bring him home with you more often."

Next to him, Sungjin-hyung chokes on his barley tea. Wonpil rubs his back.

"It's been too long since the last time!" Wonpil's eomma continues, ignoring the impending death at her table.

"I'm," Sungjin coughs, "fine. It's fine, Wonpilie, thanks, please stop."

"But what if you die," Wonpil says, smiling so it seems like a joke, "then we'll be leaderless." He thumps him, manfully, a few times before taking his hand back and returns his attention to the rest of the table.

Younghyun's unearthed himself from his bowl, it seems, to beam back at Wonpil's eomma.

"Ah, Eomonim, I would be happy to. Don't even have to have Wonpilie; I know the way by now."

"Wow," Wonpil says, distracted, "are you stealing my eomma from me, hyung?"

Younghyun grins at him, all boyish mischief in the wrinkle of his nose. It's nice to see it again after the stress of the past half a year. Sungjin seems to think so too, judging by the way he's smiling when Wonpil glances at him.

"He'll eat you out of house and home, eomonim," Sungjin-hyung says, chewing contemplatively on a pickled radish. "Best keep Wonpilie; he's the most cost-effective to feed."

"Ah," sighs Wonpil's eomma, "I wish he'd eat more. He's too skinny!"

Wonpil resentfully drinks some tea. "I eat enough. I eat a _normal_ amount."

"Are you saying this is abnormal?" Younghyun says, swallowing the last dumpling in his ... whichever bowl this was.

"For me it would be!"

"You seriously don't eat enough, though," Sungjin puts in very unhelpfully. Wonpil's eomma beams at him.

Betrayed and beset on all sides, Wonpil sits back and scowls.

"Don't pout like that, son, Sungjinnie's just showing that he cares."

Wonpil scowls harder, to cover for the way his wayward heart just tripped over itself. Out of the corner of his eye Sungjin looks a constipated mixture of embarrassed and pleased.

"Okay," Younghyun says, eyes flicking between the two of them in a way that makes Wonpil feel transparent as glass. This always happens, and it makes Wonpil want to curl up like a millipede, caught between embarrassment and gratitude. "But seriously, is this too much for me?"

Gratefully, Wonpil takes the lifeline. "I mean ... you're bigger than me so ... no. No, it's still a lot." A thought occurs to him. It's a generous one, Wonpil thinks. "But! You've got so much to do, hyung, I guess you need more energy ...?"

"Well, now that I have your permission," Younghyun's voice slides into arch mockery, but he's still smiling that ajumma-killing smile. "I can eat with an easy heart."

"Aigoo," Wonpil's eomma says, thoroughly subverted by this evil hyung. "You shouldn't nag Younghyunie so, Wonpil-ah."

Sungjin has a miniature breakdown next to him, shaking with suppressed laughter.

"If I had a superpower," Wonpil says resentfully, "it would be to mute all of you whenever I wanted."

**iv.**

Acting isn't very hard, after all.

He texts Jinyoung this at the end of a long day, when it feels like he's just emotionally disembowelled himself in front of cameras, high-schoolers, and the filming crew. For the sake of ... should Wonpil call this MV art?

Jinyoung calls him.

"I mean," Wonpil says without bothering with a greeting, "I just did what the director told me to do."

"And what did the director tell you to do?"

Wonpil pauses; he's not sure if he should tell — but who would Jinyoung tell anyway? It's not like he is on any kind of SNS. Or even reliably replies to messages.

"Look at Sungjin-hyung and feel hurt for him because he's in a one-sided love. As a teenager."

There is a long pause on the other side of the line, only Jinyoung's even breaths indicating his continued presence.

"...right," he says eventually. "And how do you feel?"

**v.**

Exhaustion has worn its grooves soul-deep, the year surging through them like an insistent river in a state of constant post-melt, grinding all of their reserves down to the bone. An energetic start in winter bounding into the rising hope and trepidation of spring; then spring was a breathless sprint into summer, and here they are now: on the cusp of autumn, wondering how they're going to make it through to the end of the year.

He's so tired.

Still, Wonpil can't sleep. He can't put it out of his mind tonight: the mistakes he made during practice today. Not even with the stupid _lyrics_ , but clumsy errors, fingers frustratingly fat from weariness; the way everyone had just sighed instead of making fun; the way they'll have to do all this three more times; the way he feels like he's drowning in music but not particularly enjoying it.

"Yah," Sungjin groans from the bunk below, "stop fucking moving so much."

Indignation flares up too hot and fast in Wonpil's chest, and he raises a foot to stomp in spiteful retaliation before catching himself just a moment before he feels both annoyed _and_ like an asshole.

Translating the momentum into sitting up, he whispers a harsh, " _Fine_ ," and swings his legs down onto the ladder.

"You're still movi — what're you — go to _sleep_."

"Can't," Wonpil says shortly. "Going outside. Bri-hyung's probably still up."

His only response is an incoherent grumble as Sungjin turns over, the joints of the wood bedframe squeaking a little as he thumps down to face the wall. Stomach-turning affection rises unbidden and unwelcome. And so Wonpil pads into the dimly lit living room feeling a little sick, a little sad, and a little annoyed at feeling the first two.

As expected, Younghyun's still crouched over the desk shoved up against one wall, the only two sources of light his laptop and the desk lamp. He has his hair fisted in one hand, head leaning against his wrist, as he scribbles in fits and starts on scrap paper. It's a toss-up between lyrics and exam preparation.

When Wonpil draws closer, he sees that the sheet is covered in graphs and differential equations that Wonpil has been more than happy to forget after high school. He also sees that Younghyun's coffee mug has been emptied, and the scrunch between his eyebrows that means an impending headache.

Silently, he turns to go get a glass of water for each of them.

"You should be in bed."

Humming in response, Wonpil lets Younghyun's words sit in the air between them while he fills up mugs from the hot water dispenser in the kitchen. The coffee press is sitting next to it; a black, toxic sludge seems to have started forming its own stratigraphy on the base. Wonpil isn't a particular person at _all_ , but this ... he puts the press in the sink.

"Water, hyung," he says sternly, returning to the living room and setting it down next to the empty coffee mug.

Younghyun glances up at him, mouth already open like he's going to ask for coffee, then closes it when he sees the mighty scowl trembling on Wonpil's face.

"Your face will freeze like that," Younghyun says, but it comes out limp.

Watching him sip cautiously at the water, Wonpil shrugs, then can't help but smile when Younghyun gulps down half the mug in one go. He sips at his own water, then, electing to sit on the floor and lean back against the television console with his knees tucked to his chest. They're the perfect resting spot for his mug.

"Pilie ..." a foot nudges at his ankle. "Go back to bed."

"No," says Wonpil, having made himself comfortable. "I'll stay here with you. I can't sleep and I'm bored and it's sad to study all alone."

There's a long enough silence that Wonpil thinks Younghyun's given up and gone back to revising.

When he puts his mug down so that he can rest his cheek on his knees, though, he finds that Younghyun is just _staring down at him_. In fact, he's biting down on his lower lip in a very particular way and — oh, oh no, his nose is red and he's definitely blinking tears away.

"Younghyunie-hyung," Wonpil says urgently, sitting upright and reaching out helplessly to touch his knee, before taking his hands back to clench in his pyjama legs. "What's wrong?"

A wet laugh issues forth. "Nothing, just — everything." Younghyun sighs, puts his face into his hands.

"You can do it, hyung," Wonpil says quietly, getting up onto his knees to pat at Younghyun's back. "It'll be —"

"Stop."

Wonpil shuts up, alarmed.

There's a strange, dark intensity in Younghyun's eyes, still gleaming with unshed tears, when he raises his head. Only the desk lamp illuminates the living room now, Younghyun's laptop having gone dark, a spill of warm amber inscribing a circle around them. It feels a little like they've slipped out of time, like this space out of joint with the dark shadows is the only real thing.

"Don't ... don't say it'll be fine or all right in the end." His voice is hoarse. "We don't know that."

"Well, no. But it's, hmmm." Wonpil pauses, thinking hard. "Isn't it better to believe in a good outcome than to let other thoughts bring you down?"

Younghyun gives him a long look, inscrutable and unsettling. He smiles. It lightens Wonpil's heart a little, however briefly his lips had turned up. "That's a very Wonpilie thing to say."

"I don't just _say_ it," Wonpil responds, injured.

"Ah, no, no, I know you think it too." Younghyun sighs, and his eyes slide shut. His eyelids are faintly red and the skin around his eyes is bruised purple with exhaustion. "I'm just. So. Tired."

Wonpil bites his lip. He wants to tell him to go to sleep, just for a little while; he isn't sure how well Younghyun will take the suggestion.

The decision is taken out of his hands when Younghyun slumps a little, suddenly, and jerks back upright. Well, if he's literally falling asleep like _that_ , then —

"Hyung," Wonpil says carefully, as gentle and soft as he can. "It's all right to take a short nap, isn't it? What are you always charging ahead for? I'll wake you up when you want me to."

"What about ..." Younghyun blinks hard. "...you?"

"I'm okay, I've been sleeping well. Twenty minutes? Fifteen?"

He can see Younghyun giving in, the way the tension runs out of his body and his face and he just sags down onto his crossed arms. "Twenty. Please."

"Okay. The year's ending soon," Wonpil says soothingly, rests his fingers on the back of Younghyun's neck. "It'll all be done soon."

"Pilie..." Younghyun mumbles, sleep-drunk. "Thank you."

**vi.**

Between filming That MV and its drop (along with the single and all the activity _that_ always entailed), Wonpil had had enough time to think and self-interrogate and go on many long night-time walks.

It's a good thing that their dorms have always been a walkable distance from the JYP building, that Cheongdam-dong is a relatively safe neighbourhood, that the members are so used to his habit of going on these starlit meanders.

One of Wonpil's favourite things about living in Cheongdam-dong is that you could walk down to the river, if you walked long enough.

The Han runs through many of his memories, the wide rippling ribbon of it playing accompaniment as he worked through problems in solitude; a steady, indifferent companion moving to its own different vast conception of time, to hydrological rhythms that will long outlast the small upheavals and petty storms that roil Wonpil's short, human life.

There's a comfort in that, Wonpil thinks, corollary to his personal mantra. All things shall pass. 

So it had flowed by him too, that muggy summer night, and borne uncaring witness to the crystallisation of his feelings:

He was tired of this. He didn't want to live a modern art piece. He didn't want his life to imitate art or art to imitate his life until it became some heart-shrivelling ouroboros of pity.

He'd wanted ...

Wonpil remembers the long, long breath he'd blown out then, leaning over some anonymous fence in a more residential part of Cheongdam. The Han had been sluggish in this wide bend of the river, as though it too was feeling the summer heat. Sweating moisture into the air like everyone else. Like this, maybe any passers-by would think the tear tracks on his face had been sweat.

He'd wanted to be free.

It'd felt like a lock turning, maybe. The dislodging of anchor. A knot untensing.

Some subterranean shifting had been happening, unbeknownst to Wonpil himself, as they'd hurtled towards the end of 2017.

Now: in the bracing, lung-scouring cold of the new year, Wonpil feels lighter, clearer. Like the brittle winter sun has reached into his ribs and peeled them open, to let all the festering things inside out.

And that's the point of a new year too, right? Tabula rasa; a fresh start; a chance to let those shifts work their way up from the tectonic strata of Wonpil's internal world through to the surface. Terraforming his emotional landscape from within. 

Wonpil's always been one more for going with his instinct and the flow of things, but in this case he takes a leaf out of his best friend's book and makes a list.

So here, his actionable items:

He does his best to think twice before bantering.

To pull back before he trips over the line between humorously annoying dongsaeng and attention-seeking loser with a crush.

To engineer things such that he never has to spend time alone and awake with Sungjin. (Moving into a new place with rooms for each of them helps. A lot.)

To unflip his stomach and untense his lungs.

It should be easy, because there isn't a day where they aren't busy with practice or trying to write new songs that don't sound the same. 

Easy, when under the cover of being able to let loose at home, he redoubles his efforts at annoying Jae-hyung out of his sinking moods into laughter.

Easy, when Younghyun-hyung, now freed from school, has more time to play around with him.

Easy, because his main cuddle companion has been Dowoon, always.

He'd always respected boundaries, in the end.

So few things change in practice, really.

He thinks that Jinyoungie would be proud that Wonpil is actually going to finally learn to love himself.

**vii.**

"Hyung," Wonpil says as winsomely as he is capable of, which is _very_ , "can we please borrow your tv?"

The blanketed lump on the bed makes a noise that's mostly rasp; Younghyun's first two attempts at making words unstick from his throat don't really work, and then he rasps, "What for?"

"Champion's League."

Younghyun's face (presumably) smashes back into his pillow. Long practice is what enables Wonpil to decipher: "Who's playing?"

"Real and AC Milan."

A long, low groan tells Wonpil that Younghyun is about to give in, so he fist pumps a little behind his back.

Finally, the mound of blankets shifts and peels back to reveal his hyung, hair in absolute disarray and eyes still squinted shut.

"Fine. Just. Five minutes."

Wonpil lets out a cheer; down the corridor comes Dowoon's corresponding whoop and his footsteps thundering closer.

A pillow flies towards him.

The pillow revists its brief career as a weapon a while later, when they're arguing about whether or not Madrid's galactico policy was fair or not; Wonpil's resorted to whapping Younghyun with said pillow for emphasis, Dowoon half-watching the ongoing game and half trying to get them to stop between his laughter.

Younghyun stops Wonpil's attack in its tracks by wrenching the pillow away, octopusing him and wrestling him around so he's back to watching the game, and his legs and arms are pinned in place. By Younghyun's own. Like a very aggressive cuddle.

"What are you doing?" Sungjin asks, having stopped by the door to see what all the commotion was. "Oh, football!"

Wonpil hopes to god Younghyun doesn't notice how he's stiffened. Younghyun probably has, going by the way his grip on Wonpil tightens briefly. Comfort, maybe?

"This is prison," Younghyun says, shaking Wonpil a little. "For bad brats who beat their hyungs."

Sungjin makes a thoughtful sound, eyebrows rising. "Maybe I should try that too."

Wonpil really can't help the flinch this time; it's enough that Younghyun's hands slide across his waist into more of a hug.

Still, Wonpil tries, heart in his throat: "When have I ever beat you, hyung?"

"You'd accidentally break him if you did this, hyung," Younghyun backs him up.

"Shhhhhh," Dowoon shushes them all, eyes still fixed on the tiny figures running about on the green pitch.

"Can I join?" Sungjin asks, and Wonpil does his best not to say no.

"My bed might break with all of us on it." Younghyun shrugs. "If it does, you'll have to pay for a new one."

"You were the ones fighting," Sungjin points out reasonably, and pads in to sit down next to Dowoon near the foot of the bed.

Silence falls, momentarily, until Milan takes possession and start making real headway on Real's goalposts.

Sungjin and Dowoon immediately explode — one yelling at Milan to "Shoot! Just shoot!!!!" and the other shouting at Real to "Defend!!! Mark them properly!!!" — before they both subside both physically and audibly as the shot goes wide into the stands. And then promptly, they start loudly telling the players what to do in a game played a week ago, as Real set up for a corner kick.

This is _fun_. Wonpil's giggling too hard to contribute, even as Vázquez takes the corner and play starts up again.

In the midst of the commotion, Younghyun dips in so that his mouth is level with Wonpil's ear; his hair tickles Wonpil's jaw.

"Is this uncomfortable?" Younghyun murmurs, low and quiet in Wonpil's ear, for just him to hear.

Wonpil blinks. Ah, they've been cuddling like this for a while now; he must be going numb. "No. Is it for you?"

He can feel Younghyun's shoulders go up and down behind him when he shrugs. "Not really."

"Okay then," Wonpil says peacefully, and then nearly takes Younghyun's nose off when he jerks upright and shouts, "THAT'S A YELLOW CARD!!! CARD HIM, REF!!!!!"

"I take it back," Younghyun says, and tips Wonpil out of his lap.

Wonpil stays horizontal, burying a laugh in the comforter. "Sorry, sorry," he gasps, and then both Sungjin and Dowoon are shushing them, and Jae-hyung is giving them all his patented judgmental-bemused-suffering look from the door.

"Soccer." Younghyun switches into English. "Big game. Big teams."

"Come watch with us, hyungie," Wonpil says, entirely ignoring the fact that the bed is probably actually going to break under their combined weights.

"Ah," says Jae-hyung, and sits himself down in the gap of space left between Wonpil and Sungjin's back.

Wonpil sits back up so he can see, shuffles aside so that Younghyun can see, and gloms onto Dowoon's back. Agreeable as ever, Dowoon reacts just enough to give the arm Wonpil has slung about his waist an absent pat.

The bed is definitely overcrowded now. It was never meant for five full-grown men, but between how warm it is, and how much fun to confuse Jae with explanations of the offside rule and its intricacies and what a set piece from a corner is ...

Wonpil is thoroughly distracted and deeply happy.

**viii.**

It occurs to Wonpil one evening, after he's come back from using piano practice to avoid another invitation to go for a drive from Sungjin, that this has started feeling more habitual; more a trained reflex than intentional self-protection.

It is, he decides as he mindlessly scans the words in the book Jinyoung had given him months and months ago for his birthday, probably a good sign.

"Wonpilie."

That's Younghyun, interrupting his train of thought and hanging in through Wonpil's bedroom door, because nobody in this band has ever heard of knocking. Wonpil's noona would have murdered his bandmates (except Sungjin-hyung) a hundred years ago. "Remember [that track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl6zID-2wN0) you played on our free radio episode in ... what was it, 2016? Before that fever dream that was 2017?"

Wonpil looks up. "No."

He's been doing this, asking random questions about music at increasingly frequent intervals this year. Studying up, Wonpil supposes. As they all should be.

Younghyun made a frustrated noise. "No? It was like ... there were horns and like ..." and then he starts making supposed horn noises and beatboxing. They sound like trumpet noises, because that's ... what everything sounds like when he employs the embouchre he learnt in Toronto. But his point is made.

"Ah," Wonpil pushes himself further up to sit cross-legged, interest piqued. "That."

"You know it?"

The look of amazement on Younghyun's face would be more gratifying if Wonpil actually did.

"No, but I know the kind of feeling ... I have a playlist..."

Younghyun lets himself into Wonpil's room whilst Wonpil's leaning over the side of his bed to retrieve his laptop (see, again: nobody in this band knows how to knock; Wonpil thinks it might have something to do with them living in dorms).

"Have you eaten?" He asks while Wonpil is searching through his playlists.

"Yes, hyung, you're such a nag. I ordered delivery."

"You ate in the practice room?" He sounds scandalised, but it's so obviously put-upon.

Wonpil pokes him without looking, finger sinking into his side. "Like you don't either."

"I'm a good boy" — laughter was bubbling in his voice — "I obey the rules."

"Ha, is that so?" Wonpil says, and shies away when Younghyun makes to squash him. "Stop, stop, I found it!"

He ends up under an arm anyway as they lie on their fronts, sides pressed together, brass flourishes over house beats bursting from the bluetooth speakers he has set up around his room.

This is nice, he thinks. It's always nice to listen to music you liked enough to put into a playlist ages ago and find that you still like it. To come back to things with fresh ears and pick out new ideas and motifs you hadn't before. And the specific joy of showing something you like to a friend, and have them like it just as much: that particular feeling of kinship it engenders.

"I really like your sound set-up," Younghyun says absently, when one track is crossfading into the next.

"Mmmm. You can't have it."

"Yah, I didn't say I wanted it, what do you think of me?"

"I think exactly what you think I think of you," Wonpil says nonsensically.

They've descended into a verbal scuffle verging on the physical when a knock on the doorframe halts the proceedings.

Sungjin is leaning in, a faintly bemused look on his face. Wonpil waits for a swoop in his belly that doesn't come.

"You finished practice? Did it go well?"

Wonpil nods. He opens his mouth to ... say something, anything, when the track charges straight into some kind of fanfare underlain by a snapping, reverberating bass and — and _timpanis??_ he doesn't remember this — and Younghyun goes absolutely feral next to him.

Being very used to this sort of thing, Sungjin merely says over Younghyun's delighted whooping: "Ah, that's a nice song."

"Yeah," says Wonpil, his own head bopping subconsciously to the beat. "I can send it to the chatroom."

"Sounds good," Sungjin says. After a beat, he raps the doorframe again, says, "Thanks," and walks on.

Beside him, Younghyun's still weaving his head to the beat, eyes closed and thoroughly immersed in the shape of the music. He's distracted enough that Wonpil feels okay turning his attention inwards.

He's ... surprised, by the way his stomach _hadn't_ gone into freefall, the way his heartbeat had stayed steady, the way there had been no lurching disappointment, nothing but ... normal.

So: somewhere in the interstices, it seems Wonpil has step by aching, painful step, managed to inoculate himself against the lurch in his belly and unlearn the yearning that had become a habit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is like 90% written and I'll be posting the next two parts within the week, I think! 
> 
> thanks for reading; please kudos, talk with me in the comments, and [retweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1226287637381754881) if you enjoyed! (:


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a (mostly) fluffy interlude with (possibly inept) flirting, much obliviousness, and my favourite: jinpil bffery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more for the weekend, and then we'll see how quickly I can polish off the last chapter!

**ix.**

"You don't sound ..." Jinyoung hesitates for long enough that Wonpil wonders if the video connection has glitched. "You don't sound tangled up about Sungjin-hyung anymore."

He called to congratulate Wonpil on the drop of their second EP of the year and then sing _Marathon_ loudly and obnoxiously over the phone, because Jinyoung is at heart a sixty year old man who likes old-style music. And somehow that had wound its way through teasing Jinyoung for being an ajusshi to Sungjin-hyung _seriously_ being an ajusshi in a twenty-something's body, to... this.

"Oh." Wonpil says. Of course Jinyoung would've been able to tell. He's been there since the sorry beginning, after all. "It had to happen at some point. We grow up. Change. Make conscious decisions to move on."

Jinyoung hums the doubtful hum of a man who has some kind of death pact understanding and had made the conscious decision to not move on. Wonpil still doubts the soundness of that decision, but Jinyoung and Jaebeom have always been weird about each other.

"Okay," Jinyoung says. "I'm...glad you got over the thing, Wonpilie. ...and a little surprised, maybe. After all my efforts!"

Wonpil's as bitter as he gets when he shrugs and smiles a little, mouth pulling thin to one side. "It's been so long it started seeming less like determination and more like... I don't know. Foolhardiness. Not everyone gets their happy ending with their first love, Jinyoungie."

**x.**

Younghyun-hyung inexplicably decides he has to commando crawl from his room to Wonpil's to hide a birthday present, and utterly mistimes it so that:

(a) Wonpil opens the bathroom door while the upper half of his body is in Wonpil's room and the rest of him is just blocking the corridor;

(b) Jae-hyung is bodily hanging out of his own door to unhelpfully observe the proceedings and narrate like that English harabeoji on BBC nature documentaries.

"And here you have the Ilsan Brian," Jae-hyung is saying in what even Wonpil can tell is a terrible English accent, and then he continues in words that are too difficult for Wonpil to understand.

"What are you doing?" he decides to ask instead.

It's pretty funny, to see Younghyun freeze in place, his entire body seizing up. Wonpil bites down on the threatening giggles.

Very, very slowly, like he's trying not to startle a baby deer, Younghyun pushes himself up and turns around. His hands are empty. His face is already collapsing into that familiar, sheepishly embarrassed rictus.

"Hyung," Wonpil starts, before the giggles overtake him. He's talking through them as he advances towards his room. "Seriously, are you preparing for the military or something?"

"With _that_ commando crawl?" Jae asks dubiously. "He looked more like an inchworm."

"Maybe I just wanted to make you laugh?" Younghyun says.

Rolling his eyes, Wonpil steps past him. This hyung had the weirdest defence mechanisms. "Okay, fine, keep your secrets."

He only notices the slim, squishy package wrapped in Snoopy giftwrap a few days later. In his defence, it'd been slid under his bed, probably in some desperate last attempt by Younghyun to get rid of the evidence. It's a good thing Wonpil believes in vacuuming under his bed, unliked certain best friends whose good name he is too nice to impugn.

There's a message written on one of the white spaces between be-hatted beagles in Younghyun's best handwriting: _To our musical genius Piri-Miri: You've made it 25 revolutions around the sun, congratulations! Thank you for the sentiment you bring to our music ... I hope these will come in handy._

It's a joke present: a value pack of Pororo pocket tissues that Wonpil is pretty sure he's seen on sale at their local drugstore.

"Did you really go to all that effort just to hide this?" he says to his empty room.

But when he looks in the bathroom mirror later while washing his hands, the corners of his lips are still twitching irrepressibly upwards.

**xi.**

"This reminds me of — " Wonpil has to break off for a bit to swallow down the threatening laughter " — because of, you know, oh, _tragedy_ of _it all_ , innocents getting embroiled in dark affairs — this reminds me of how artichokes were banned from New York in the 1930s."

There's a short silence. He's pretty sure everyone's already forgotten that they'd started out throwing out bits of inspiration for this yet-unharmonised bridge.

"How... do you know that?" Jae-hyung asks.

"That couldn't have really happened," Jisang-hyung says.

"It did!" Wonpil says indignantly. "My friend told me! He read it in an online magazine!"

"Aaaaah," Younghyun says, drawing it out. "Is that so? Then it must be true."

Wonpil kind of wants to hit him, because his eyes are widened and he's talking in that sing-song way that means he's making fun.

That's not how they usually play though, so he smiles harder and presses his palms together. "Yes," he sings back, "That is exactly so!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jae-hyung pinching the bridge of his nose, unconstrained by the lack of any recording cameras. Jisang-hyung's mouth is trembling with suppressed laughter and he hasn't kindly reminded them to stop bantering and get back to the song they're supposed to work on yet.

Jae-hyung has no compunctions, however, about slapping his guitar and saying, "Okay! So! The bridge!"

"You're no fun anymore, hyung," Wonpil says mournfully.

"Yeah, hyung," Younghyun adds on, and it's so much more fun when that tone of voice is aimed at someone else. It's so much more fun when Younghyun joins forces with him. "Is this what happens when you turn twenty-seven?"

"That's in fake Korean time," Jae grinds out.

"But hyung, you're in _Korea_ now!"

" _Children_!!" Jae says in English, conspicuously derailing the oncoming debate. "We don't have the studio booked forever!!"

"All right, all right," Wonpil says, edging away back towards where his gear is set-up. "We should listen to the elderly, Younghyunie-hyung."

They exchanged amused looks that brim over with laughter as Jae half-starts threateningly towards him, from the sofa he has been slowly becoming one with over the day.

"It's all Wonpilie's fault anyway," Younghyun says abruptly, grinning at Wonpil when he looks up from trying out different settings on the keyboard in shock. "He started it."

"How —" Wonpil starts protesting.

Younghyun looks too pleased with himself by half, delivering his line: "He's too cute to resist teasing."

"Yah," Wonpil pouts, leftover adrenaline from annoying Jae-hyung making him feel like he's going to vibrate out of his skin, like he's flushed all over.

"Cute as Wonpilie is," Jisang-hyung cuts in, dry as dust, "you're going to have to resist, Younghyun-ah."

**xii.**

"What do you do," Wonpil asks sleepily, "when your members tease you?"

It's 2 am but Jinyoungie is on the other side of the world, so he is willing to Make Concessions. At least he has his own room now so he doesn't have to go out into the living room for a phone call.

There's a thoughtful silence, and then Jinyoung says, "Depends."

Wonpil makes a sound of dissatisfaction and rolls over onto his side so that he can support the hand holding his phone with a pillow.

"You can tell them to stop, you know. If it crosses your line," Jinyoung says, exactly like someone whose teammates are, somewhere in their lizard brains, terrified of his vengeful streak. Wonpil does not have the energy for that. Bearing grudges like Jinyoung does would make him break out. "That's just bullying, then. Though I can't imagine..."

"No, no! Nobody's bullying me."

"Good." The placidity in Jinyoung's voice is somehow more terrifying than anything else.

"It's just ..." Wonpil sighs and buries his face in his pillow, and then groans.

He's just resurfaced when someone knocks at his door and it squeaks open.

A dark figure leans in through the gap.

"You're still awake?"

"So are _you_ ," Wonpil says, acutely aware of Jinyoung's eyes sharp on his face, that Jinyoung can hear everything.

" _Yah_ ," Younghyun says, the reproof in his voice underscored with laughter. "I just went to get water. You shouldn't be up so late — ah, having clandestine midnight meetings, I see?"

"Hi, Brian-hyung," Jinyoung says drily.

"Jinyoungie, of course." Younghyun says. He can't even see Wonpil's screen. "Don't keep our Wonpilie up too late, he gets grumpy if he's sleep deprived and then throws tantrums when songs don't work out the way he wants."

"I do _not_ —"

"Exactly like that."

Wonpil can't see his face in the darkness of his room, lit only by his phone and the warm glow leaking in from the corridor, but he knows for _sure_ that Younghyun is smirking.

"Go away," says Wonpil rudely. "I'm talking to Jinyoungie, not you."

"Ouch!" Younghyun swoons dramatically backwards, whisper-shouting. "Struck to the quick! Such cruel words, Wonpilie! How will I ever recover?"

Wonpil sighs deeply and tries to exchange _see what I have to deal with here_ looks with Jinyoung. Jinyoung looks mildly incredulous, but mostly traitorously amused.

"Hyung, please just g—"

Younghyun slides into his room.

"That is the exact opposite of —"

"Sorry to interrupt, Jinyoung-ah," Younghyun says, ignoring him to dip down into frame and wave at Jinyoung. His enormous, freshly-showered head is now blocking Wonpil's view and dripping water onto Wonpil's sheets. "But I meant it about Wonpilie's bedti — ow!"

"I'll hit you again," Wonpil threatens.

"All right, all right, I'm going, wow." He retreats, but not before getting in a poke at Wonpil's cheek.

The moment the door clicks shut, Wonpil says with great feeling, "See! That! Always!"

Wonpil's aware that his face is screwing up something awful, and that Jinyoung is probably taking screenshots.

"He always makes fun of me," Wonpil steams on, now all awake from the adrenaline of sheer indignation. "I can tell! Even when he's being nice!!"

"How is this new?"

"It ... isn't!"

"So?"

"That's my point! There's only so much teasing someone can take!"

"Maybe you should listen to your own advice," Jinyoung says, laughing a little.

"Yah," Wonpil hisses. "You're supposed to be on _my side_."

"You sound so very upset."

Wonpil draws up short, and pulls his phone further away from his face to squint at. "I am!"

"Okay." Jinyoung sounds exactly the same flavour of false long-suffering patience he adopts around his maknae. "What else does Brian-hyung do that's so annoying?"

"It's not _annoying_ ," Wonpil says, in the interests of being fair but also accurate. "It's just ... _ugh_." He drums his feet against the bed for lack of words.

"Ugh," Jinyoung repeats after him solemnly, eyes already creasing with laughter. "Of course."

**xiii.**

It isn't all teasing all the time, of course.

Wonpil doesn't realise that he's closed his eyes whilst talking until he opens them once the words run out and he realises that he's repeated the whole "wind slipping through one's fingers" metaphor about five times. He's not really the word person here, for all the media training that's managed to be drummed into his brain.

There's a queer look on Younghyun's face, knuckles digging into the soft squish of his cheek where he's resting his head on his fist.

"Interviewers, fans ... people always ask who hurt me," he says, sounding a little absent, even though his eyes are focussed on Wonpil. "But they should be asking you too, hmm?"

Panic ricochets up and down Wonpil's spine, freezes him in place like a deer in headlights. "Eh?" is all that he can manage. "Nobody's — what?"

Younghyun's mouth pulls to one side in a dry little smile; it would be a smirk if there were any smugness or mockery in it at all. As it is, Wonpil's merely left confused and a little worried as Younghyun blows out a breath and shakes his head.

"Wonpilie," he says, still smiling that funny little smile. "I know we all write from a certain kernel of truth. On some level, everything we write, we've felt first-hand. Here." He taps himself on the sternum. "And then we embellish."

Wonpil waits for him to make the joke: the tired old script Younghyun has repeated over and over, ad nauseum.

The absence unfoots him, like when you're going up a flight of stairs and expect another step instead of level ground.

"Really, hyung," Wonpil finds himself insisting into the silence. "I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Yes." Wonpil says insistently. "Are _you_?"

Something strange passes over Younghyun's face. Like a cloud-shadow sculling quickly through a field. He smiles; it's not the plastic media smile he gets, there's too much wryness to it for that, and not nearly as much gentle warmth as he shows the fans. It sets bleeding hooks in Wonpil's chest.

"Never better," he says lightly, and sits up, shuffling his notes together. Knocks the sheaf against the desk edge. "I'm fine if you are, Pilie."

**xiv.**

Music broadcast recording days are almost more surreal than touring. Or maybe they're a different flavour of surreal, with the base ingredients of exhaustion, strange sleeping patterns, and lots of preparing to wait and waiting to prepare.

They all deal with it in their own ways, and their own personal staff as well as the music show staff manage to keep them occupied with filming for at least some of the time. There's: napping, practising, playing games, scrolling endlessly through social media (mostly Jae-hyung), eating, deconstructing interesting songs, napping again — and then sometimes there's random welling up of high absurdism.

All the frenetic energy waiting to be let loose on stage has to burst the dam _sometimes_.

This time, it started with Jae-hyung demanding that someone put some music on — and to turn the stage monitor off. As with all karaoke sessions impromptu and otherwise, Bohemian Rhapsody inevitably happens. This is, however, usually a group attempt.

"We're two people down," Wonpil protests, even though he's absolutely already air-piano-ing along to the intro whilst Dowoon enthusiastically butchers the falsetto.

Jae is in the bathroom and Sungjin had wandered out, complaining about preserving their voices and being hungry two songs ago.

Younghyun seizes him by the shoulders, eyes wild with what Wonpil assumes is the unholy spirit of Freddie Mercury, and intensely says, "We can DO IT," before spinning away to grab a hairbrush and harmonise into it with Dowoon.

The staff, being very used to this, carry on with their lives. A junior manager closes the door firmly shut.

It's easy to get carried away by the music, the sheer pleasure and joy of yowling along to the song everyone wishes they could've written, of playing around with someone who always matches Wonpil height for absurd height.

In the midst of all the head-banging and air-piano-ing, not to mention the enthusiastic yowling and by-now reflexive seeking of harmonies, he looks up and catches Younghyun's eyes in the mirror. And: that's same old grin that rounds that sharp face when Younghyun's having fun, the same old laugh, the same old thin crescents that laughter presses his eyes into, but —

His stomach flips over, somersaults slowly. It feels like the drop on a rollercoaster. Wonpil blinks, and looks down at his belly button in confusion.

The laughter _and_ music peter out, and there's a large, warm hand on his back. "You okay there, Pilie? Did you hurt yourself?"

Wonpil shakes his head, mostly preoccupied with trying to process the way it still feels like his stomach is in freefall. Then he realises that Younghyun might press further, and then nods his head.

"I'm dizzy," he lies, keeping his eyes fixed on the tiled floor between their feet. "I'm going to ... go lie down."

"Ah, welcome to your mid-twenties, Wonpilie. Everything starts breaking down. Do you want to lean on me?"

"You still live freely," Wonpil points out absently. "You don't take care of your health at _all_."

He lets Younghyun guide him to the waiting room sofa that's all of three metres away, though. It feels nice to be taken care of like this, even if it's under false pretences.

Younghyun laughs, settles him down, and pats his cheek. "Carpe diem, right? Have a good lie-down, Wonpilie."

And then he wanders off to go spin idly in a salon chair whilst looking at his phone.

Somewhere in the middle of his own absent, under-the-lashes contemplation of Younghyun's profile, as he wonders what's putting that familiar old lazily amused, smug smirk on his face, it hits Wonpil:

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Seriously? Again? On _another_ bandmate?

Wonpil is such an idiot. He can't believe this. He's such an idiot.

"Wonpilie?" Jae-hyung's asking. Oh, he's back. "You okay? You look a little pale."

"No," he says later, curling in on himself. "I'm fine, I'm sorry, just a little headache. I'm gonna take a nap."

Long, thin fingers are pressed to his forehead, next thing he knows. They feel warm and dry. His eyes fly open in shock.

"Hmm," Jae-hyung says. "You _are_ a little clammy."

Probably, Wonpil reflects inwardly, because he's just gone through an unwanted emotional epiphany.

"Sungjin's still in the cafeteria choosing snacks. I'll ask him to bring you back something to eat." Jae pauses. "Dowoon-ah, stop practising for a bit, Wonpilie has a headache."

Now Wonpil feels _really_ bad about lying on top of everything else.

He's about to ... say it's okay, he can put his earphones in — all the better to block out the rest of the world — when Younghyun of all people looks up from where he'd been smiling genuinely down at his phone.

(It's hard for Wonpil to suppress the questions: what he was looking at; if he'd been smiling at text messages or just those weird Western memes; who he'd been texting; was it someone Wonpil's never known — he _hates_ this, hates the mood he can feel himself sinking fast into, and needs to talk himself out of it in peace and relative quiet.)

"It's got worse?" Younghyun asks, smile dropping into a concerned frown.

Oh no, he's getting up from his chair. The stylist-noonas are making concerned sounds from their corner. The guilt churning in Wonpil's stomach makes him feel like he might be genuinely sick now. He closes his eyes and turns over to hide his face in the back of the sofa.

"Maybe we should find some medicine," Jae's saying to the managers. "We can't play live like this. The drums alone —"

Most of the lights in the room abruptly snick off, so that a dim glow remains only from a single strip of lights and the glow of their managers' laptop screens.

"I have headache pills somewhere..." Younghyun's saying from somewhere behind Wonpil's back, accompanied by the sounds of unzipping and of rustling.

"I'm fine," Wonpil says at last, past the guilt knotting in his throat. "Just need a nap."

"Okay," Jae says, "that's fine. Naptime for everyone!"

"Wonpilie..." that's Younghyun's voice, now very near. Too near. "I got your headphones."

Afraid of making eye contact, he turns nevertheless to take them. Politeness forces him to.

"Thanks, hyung," he says quietly, and holds very still when Younghyun strokes his hair, fingers leaving tingling trails behind.

The next while is spent in dark, isolated quiet, trying to pull himself back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> artichokes [really were banned in NYC in the 1930s](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/strange-mafia-histories). 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this instalment too. If this made you feel a ling, hit that kudos, write me a comment, and [retweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1226594181046525952), thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and now we reach, with some panicked pining, the happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks @alykapedia for answering my SOS, whip-cracking when i threatened to get distracted, and providing a second eye. i meant to post this before valentine's day was over but well (squints at the clock) .... thx also to aly because TIME is a CONSTRUCT so whenever i post this IS valentine's day.
> 
> lastly this fic may as well be summarised by [this comic](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4ZR1qDWsAAtmpE?format=jpg&name=large) ([source](https://twitter.com/retquits/status/1118671992587214849)).

**xv.**

"Wow," says Jinyoung, "I think you're worse than me and Jaebeom-hyung."

Wonpil sulkily sips at his iced latte.

("That's not coffee, Wonpilie," Mister Park 'I'm A Hard Leading Man Now Who Drinks Only Black Coffee' Jinyoung had said earlier, "that's just coffee-flavoured vanilla milk."

"You're missing out," Wonpil had retorted, and ordered it anyway).

"No one can be worse than you and Jaebeom-hyung. I had to fall out of love with someone else _first_."

They're hanging out in one of the private piano rooms in the basement, stealing some time away between Wonpil's practice sessions whilst Jinyoung's actually in the country.

He'd rather they talk about this somewhere more private, like Jinyoung's new flat that he refuses to show anyone, but they don't really have a choice.

"Ah, Wonpilie," Jinyoung says, softening, "you and your spaniel heart."

"I hate it." Wonpil puts his cup down. "It's stupid. Feelings are _stupid_."

Jinyoung doesn't say anything, and looks at him steadily.

" _Yah_. Stop it."

Jinyoung holds his steady regard.

Groaning, Wonpil flops over on the piano bench, uncaring of the resultant discordant clash of the ivories. "No, I like feelings, I know. But the pain, oh, the pain." He pauses and sits up. "This will pass, I know, I just thought — I just thought I'd done so well, you know?"

"You've done well," Jinyoung says immediately.

"To make the same mistake again?"

Jinyoung bites his lip, looking briefly uncertain. "You don't know that for sure."

Wonpil snorts. "Really, you don't think Kang Younghyun isn't just ..." he gestures wordlessly, trying to encompass how impossible the prospect of whatever Jinyoung is suggesting is. "It's not possible. I'm being realistic this time."

"Hmmm..." Jinyoung's hum itself sounds unconvinced, but he only pouts briefly before his eyebrows unscrunch. "Fine! So, you're going to Europe next year, aren't you?"

He almost wilts with relief, grateful that Jinyoung's letting the conversation flow away from this, and happily lets the rest of their time together go on to Jinyoung telling tour stories and showing him his photograph collection.

**xvi.**

It's so hard to stay realistic in the face of just how much Younghyun is ... around him all the time. It's like he's hypersensitive now — to how much Younghyun touches him, to the exact lilt of his voice when he teases, to every smile so fraught it's hard for Wonpil to look at him. It's like the air is electrified whenever they're in remotely the same vicinity, but it's the hair on only his arms that stands. Every cell in his body attuned to the particular cluster of frequencies that Younghyun inhabits. Like the shape of Younghyun is always there, a constant dip in the gravitational field of Wonpil's awareness.

It's frustrating, exhilarating, harrowing. The tension between feeling this way and trying to act as he has — _before_ — makes him feel like he might fly apart at the seams.

Ignorance truly is bliss, because Wonpil has no idea how he managed with any sort of equanimity before: the way Younghyun's proprietary arm always lands casually, unthinkingly across his shoulders; or the way he'll glance up mid-sentence and catch Younghyun's eyes, focussed politely on him; or the exact toothiness of Younghyun's grin and degree of wrinkle in his nose when he's being all mockingly indulgent.

How did he ever experience all that without the bottom of his stomach falling out, without his heart tripping over itself, without wanting to simultaneously lean in and curl away?

Now, with the sun beating down on them even through the thick white canvas, it's just. Profoundly uncomfortable. The heat of five bodies piled together on a chaise longue, the heat of high summer, the heat of Younghyun right next to him, solid and distracting.

This hat is too small for his head, and he borrows being nervous about it falling off as an excuse for how withdrawn he's being.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he catches the way Younghyun smiles down at him: amused, with a touch of something that makes his stomach fizz. He tries to disguise it, but the nervous laughter bubbling out of him is a little too transparent, maybe; the way he snaps his head back in Dowoon's much safer direction too dismissive. He almost wants to turn back and apologise — but then he'd have to explain why, and — and he should be looking at the camera anyway.

When they're set free from the group shot, Wonpil turns almost instinctively to — he isn't sure what, just yet. His mind goes a little blank when he see Younghyun's camera smile slip into a frown, blink-and-you-miss-it, before his expression smooths out. It makes his heart judder in his chest, makes him feel abruptly like his thoracic cavity has filled up with ice water.

He opens his mouth to say ... something, anything.

Only then Younghyun's gaze lands on Wonpil, and the absent haze in them sharpens into focus.

"You look like a panting puppy," he says, voice rich with amusement. "With your mouth open like that."

Wonpil snaps his mouth shut and glares up at him.

This only has the effect of making Younghyun snort laughter through his nose. "Now you're pouting," he tells Wonpil, "it's too hot out here. Come on, let's go inside."

He brushes past Wonpil on his way out from under the little shade they have. Looking at him like this, the breadth of his shoulders not disguised any by the stripes of his loose button-up ... Wonpil wishes he could just — just hold onto the back of his shirt, fist his fingers in the loose material and cling. It is the sort of instinctive desire, so strong and _physical_ and novel, that shakes Wonpil so. Like his yearning is quaking itself to the surface, and these little fantasies are merely the vanguard of some more terrible impulse.

He half turns, indulgence in the very curve of his mouth, when Wonpil makes no move.

"Wonpilie, you might actually get sunstroke, come _on_. The stylists are having entire litters of kittens over our makeup melting as it is already."

"I'm coming," he grumbles, finally getting his legs to move. "I'm coming."

"Do you think this shirt will provide cover?" Younghyun asks. He lifts one tail of his shirt up and over Wonpil's head, laughing.

"I think _you're_ getting sunstroke," retorts Wonpil.

He doesn't dare look up, but he's fairly sure Younghyun is smiling down at him.

But, well, Wonpil sees him turn that self-same smile on many other things, and can't help the way the bottom of his stomach falls out, the sour bite of disappointment despite himself. Every single fucking time.

He curls up in the wicker pod swing — because it's perfect, and sways soothingly like a lullaby, and everyone thinks it's cute.

Younghyun definitely does; there's no denying it. But he thinks many things are cute, and curves his eyes at them the way he is at Wonpil now, as he pauses momentarily on his way to posing for another set of photos to give the swing a light push and ask Wonpil if he's found a new home.

"Maybe," Wonpil says as lightly as he can.

Younghyun smiles brightly down at him, almost as bright as the sun the day before. "Guess we'll have to steal this for the dorm then."

He walks off, leaving Wonpil behind with a twist in his chest and his insides compressing. There's nothing special about what Younghyun had said or acted, but — god, the uncertainty of hope, no matter how unfounded, just makes everything _worse_.

 _I am an idiot_ , he sends Jinyoung, because he can't talk to anyone else about this, can he?

It takes about twelve hours to get a reply.

It's not very helpful: _Only sometimes. What is it now?_

And just as Wonpil's trying to compose a response that isn't just a fan-made sticker of himself despairing, Jinyoung follows up with _Or who?_

He's still dithering about how to reply when Jinyoung uncharacteristically sends yet another follow up message. _Ok, stupid question. You're not stupid about this, Wonpilie. You're doing just fine. You didn't think your way into this. No one can help falling in love._

**xvii.**

By the time they return to Seoul to prepare for the album drop, the weather has properly turned.

Wonpil develops an irritating and persistent sniffle on top of his mounting emotional distress.

Touring — and the sense of boundless, exhilarating, time-out-of-joint unreality that acommpanies it — always has Wonpil swinging between stage high and dead exhaustion. It leaves very little room for any other feeling, when his chief concerns are the performance, and the music, and playing to a house. Everything else just ... happily fades a little, like the soft pedal's been depressed on the rest of his life.

Of course, this just means that everything comes screaming back in stereo sound when he's in the same time zone for more than forty-eight hours. That, and his body deciding it's safe enough to finally have the post-travel stress breakdown.

Properly learning the lyrics and music to a ridiculously fast song —

("Seriously? Whose idea was this again?" he complains after his fingers slip on the rising transition into the trill for the fifth time in a row, he swears, and brings rehearsal to a crashing halt.

Dowoon gives him a speaking look from behind his drums.

Wonpil takes the point.)

— a ridiculously fast song about falling dizzyingly, madly in love is some kind of Sisphyean punishment. It must be. Younghyun is secretly out to get him; he should not be allowed to watch romantic comedies; whose idea was it to let him have feelings of any sort at all.

Obviously Wonpil cannot say any of this, so he just lets Younghyun fuss at him endlessly about going on Masked Singer by himself, tries to get used to the feeling about being torn between his warring instincts to hold himself safe and in and to just — just bask, roll around in the warmth of all that innocently affectionate attention like freshly beaten blankets warm from the sun.

The thing is, Wonpil is very bad at self-discipline when it hasn't got to do with music or — or anything else he hasn't essentially tricked himself into doing as a habit. And it's so easy, the habit of a lifetime, to compress the upset and ignore it til it goes away, to throw as much of himself into what feels happy and good otherwise. To pretend so hard it becomes reality.

The good thing is that this means he carries on pretty much as per normal, he thinks. He practises singing all by himself, not even with his keyboard or synthesiser for company, and lets Younghyun's encouraging applause and whoops sink like honey into his skin and settle warm and sweet on his nerves.

Wonpil also talks to Jae-hyung about rearrangements and turns up to rehearsals for the second round with sheet music for a five piece band, and is reminded of the show's much fuller outfit. He might freak out a little, and text Younghyun-hyung angrily about not being forewarned.

 _Ah, I knew I'd forgotten to tell you something kkkkk_ is what he gets back almost immediately.

"You're the _worst_ ," he tells his phone sternly.

Almost like Younghyun has developd the power of telepathy, more messages pop up shortly.

_Don't worry about it, the band leader has it covered._

_Focus on your singing, Pilie._

_You'll be just fine. Fighting!_

And then he caps it all off with a selfie of himself, unshaven and wretchedly still lounging about in bed, pumping his fist and smiling sleepily.

Hope, Wonpil reflects, is a terrible thing.

So he might hide behind Sungjin-hyung a little bit. Only when it gets a little too much, and Wonpil is too tired to act like his usual self.

The irony is not lost on him, but Dowoon just sort of flops away whenever Younghyun bears down on them with affection. At least — even with this new, improved Sungjin-hyung who will bear physical affection for about five seconds as opposed to none — he draws lines and Younghyun toes them.

"You," Sungjin says when they're walking back down a back alley from the convenience store to the JYP building, "are being weird."

"I'm always weird," Wonpil says lightly, and hides his face in his bottled herbal tea. "That's what you guys tell me all the time, isn't it?"

There's a short pause as they hop to one side and wait for a calvacade of delivery scooters to pass by on the pavement. Sungjin looks like he's mulling over his words, which makes Wonpil nervous.

"You know ..." Sungjin says, and looks uncomfortable. He forges on anyway, because he's that sort of annoyingly responsible person. No wonder the higher-ups made him leader. "It's not always good to keep all your grievances to yourself."

Truly confused, Wonpil can only respond with an: "Eh?"

"I know you eventually got over whatever it is I did that pissed you off." Out of the corner of his eye, Wonpil sees Sungjin smile crookedly at him. "But not everybody has a noona to learn how to deal with being ... being selectively ignored from, you know?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Wonpil says flatly, to try and cover the way panic made his lungs seize up for a second, the way it's now twisting his stomach unpleasantly.

Sungjin rolls his eyes and actually reaches over with the hand not occupied with snacks to rap Wonpil on the side of the head. "You're good at hiding your feelings, Wonpilie, but you're not _that_ good. Try actually talking to people when they've pissed you off."

"But nobody's — "

"It might actually," Sungjin continues on as though Wonpil hasn't said anything at all, "resolve things faster."

Despite knowing that it'll give him away, Wonpil can't help but snort.

"Oho," murmurs Sungjin. But the good thing about him is that when he feels he's said his piece, he rarely ever presses further.

Wonpil sighs, and resolves to do better at managing himself.

**xviii.**

With a rare, entire day off, Wonpil wakes up with the autumnal sun glad in his eyes and without any lingering exhaustion in his body. He fully intends to spend the day entirely at home, doing absolutely nothing at all.

Wonpil doesn't even realise that there's somebody else in the living room when he wanders in, eyes still half-shut and face buried in his coffee mug.

With his hair in its current unruly state, he can't really see clearly without shaking his fringe out of his face anyway. Navigating mostly by memory, he shuffles to the sofa and folds himself onto the floor, absently dropping the wrapped bun they'd got half-off at the local bakery on the way back from practice yesterday somewhere next to him while he gets situated.

He's blindly pawing at the floor around him for his breakfast, when a huff of laughter alerts him to the fact that he's not alone — even though it isn't noon yet and by all rights nobody should be up. Other than Jae-hyung, who's probably in the gym, like the muscle maniac he's morphed into.

Wonpil shakes his hair away, putting his mug down to ready himself for an invigorating dose of teasing.

When he looks up, though, it's into the lens of a video camera, behind which Younghyun is grinning at him.

"Good morning," he sing-songs, "beautiful."

"Yah," Wonpil half-shouts, rearing away from the video camera. Younghyun isn't filming live, but there's still the instinctual panic that comes with being recorded, and especially when he's being teased like this. The flirtatious edge that Younghyun brings to _everything_ makes Wonpil feel nakedly transparent. "I haven't even shaved yet — stop it, hyung!"

At least Younghyun puts the camera down, though it doesn't stop him from canting his head to one side, brows furrowing. "That doesn't matter, you know that, right? To how you look."

Wonpil makes a face. "It's not what anyone wants to see."

"It's what _I_ want to see."

It's too soon after waking up to deal with this. He wants to tell Younghyun to stop being so sweet, because it's only making getting over _him_ harder. At least with Sungjin there'd been nobody to blame but himself.

Helplessly, Wonpil instead protests: "You're lying."

"I'm not! You're so cute no matter what," Younghyun says, eyes crinkled up and the lines of his face settling in that familiar coo. "That's why I like you so much."

He sounds so sincere, it's making Wonpil's stomach ache. It aches all the way up to his heart, freezes the reflexively defensive laughter on his face.

The thing is: Wonpil and Younghyun have known each other for almost as long as Wonpil's been in this company, and have been friends for nearly as long as that. He's seen Younghyun awkward, determined, disappointed, hopeful, crying, bored, laughing; he's seen Younghyun grow into his looks and voice and body, seen him learn to wield his words, seen him learn to wield his stage presence, seen him skip merrily back and forth over the fine line between sincerity and irony, all that knowing indulgent warmth always run through with something sharp and dangerous.

And apparently Wonpil's done the stupid thing again and got too comfortable playing with fire, let himself feel safe when really he knew he shouldn't. Forgot to guard his foolish heart so that Younghyun's honeyed teasing strikes too close for comfort.

Wonpil has been silent too long, and in the absence of any response from him the smile's faded from Younghyun's face, the teasing tilt of his eyebrows softening into a concerned scrunch.

He is, Wonpil realises abruptly, more terrified of what Younghyun might say next than anything else, terribly afraid that the knife that his kind-hearted, fun-loving hyung has unknowingly stabbed him in the soft underbelly with will be twisted further.

So he coughs and gathers his feet under himself to stand up.

"Wait" — Younghyun's reaching out, confusion bleeding onto his face now. Wonpil stands hurriedly up before he can make actual contact — "Wonpilie? You're —"

His _just going?_ is mumbled, fading out when Wonpil talks over him. "I can't, sorry."

"What?"

"Sorry," Wonpil repeats, and pivots on his heel. "I have to, um, I remembered I have to do something."

The look of incredulity on Younghyun's face is making the ache under Wonpil's ribs worse. He imagines his heart bruised yellow and purple.

"Something," Younghyun parrots. A sliver of a smile appears on his face again, edged with that dangerous knife-glint of irony that Wonpil's come to recognise as a warning a little too late. Sing-song, he asks, "What's this something you have to go do, Wonpilie, even though I just told you I like you?"

Wonpil sucks in a sharp breath before he can help it, telling though it must be. He doesn't know what's spilling out all over his face, but Younghyun looks striken.

"Don't you think —" Wonpil starts, and stops to swallow. The words came out a little more uneven than he'd like, so he starts over: "Hyung, don't you think you're going a little too far?"

This time Younghyun doesn't try to stop him when he walks away.

*

The distance between the living room and his own bedroom takes barely a minute to traverse. It's a struggle to rein the tears in before he gets his door closed behind himself anyway.

Wonpil throws himself bodily down across his bed and screams into the folded blanket.

Once he's managed to shriek as much existential horror into the innocent fleece as possible, his brain kicks in and spirals: how will he ever face hyung again; how will the band ever FUNCTION if their keyboard player and bassist were on the outs; _were_ they on the outs? Because Wonpil forgot how to play along? Oh god how could he even look hyung in the face or be in the same room as him or —

A fresh wave of tears comes when Wonpil realises: he'd really liked all the warm teasing and indulgent laughter, the affectionate touches and being tucked under hyung's arm, the way hyung looked at him — even though he did that to everyone, because Kang Younghyun has never met a person or thing he couldn't subconsciously eyefuck — but Wonpil had ruined all of that for himself forever: the warm comfort of someone he could rely on for some indulgent affection. Of liking someone, and getting to have at least the little zipping thrill in his belly when that someone wasn't as averse to skinship as one Park Sungjin.

"This too shall pass," Wonpil recites sternly to himself after a while of this crying nonsense, sitting up and wiping at his face.

Of course, this is when knuckles _rat-a-tat_ against his door and it cracks open. Nobody in this band knows how to respect boundaries.

"Hyung," Dowoon says plaintively, squeezing his head in through the crack. "Are you okay?"

And then he sees the way Wonpil's face is all ruddy and tear-tracked and his eyes are still glossy with tears and — Wonpil can _not_ be blamed for tipping over sideways back down to bury his face in his bedclothes.

His door squeaks open a little further. Dowoon shuffles in and closes it behind himself with an audible click. His socked feet make _shaa-shaa_ noises against the floor as he shuffles to the bed, and sits down, the mattress dipping under his weight.

"Aigoo," says Dowoon, in his comforting low mumble. "What made you cry so badly, hyung?"

"I was not crying," Wonpil sniffs, turning his head just enough to talk and eye Dowoon's knee beadily. "Why are you here? Don't you know how knocking works?"

"Younghyun-hyung told me to come check in on you — oh!"

Dowoon swallows his words when the reserve of tears Wonpil'd been just about managing to blink back well up beyond his control. Again.

"Did you have a fight?" Dowoon, the sweet oblivious pumpkin, asks. "Really? You two?"

"No," says Wonpil, giving it up as a lost cause. He rolls onto his back and digs his knuckles angrily into his eyes. Sometimes, he hates being the sensitive one.

Even the quality of Dowoon's silence belies his confusion.

"Well," Dowoon says plaintively, putting a hand in Wonpil's hair, "don't cry anymore, hyung, it'll be okay in the end, I'm sure. Hyung didn't look angry or anything."

Wonpil cannot help but laugh a little through the tears that are still leaking out and making him all disgustingly snotty.

It is at this point, of course, that his door creaks open again. He seriously needs to get some oil for the hinges.

"Hey," says Sungjin, and Wonpil groans. "Wow. Okay, I can see when I'm not wanted. I'll be in my room if you want to talk, Pil-ah."

And then Sungjin — thankfully, blessedly, because they were really too alike to have ever lasted any hypothetical, deeply unlikely _thing_ Wonpil's teenaged infatuation gone rogue had wanted — left.

Wonpil revises his estimation of Sungjin and their roommate connection a few moments later, when his door squeaks open for the third goddamned time.

Something other than Dowoon's loud "um!!!" and the flash of pain as Dowoon's fingers in his hair clench tells him that it's Younghyun.

"Hey," says the object of Wonpil's rising anxiety and reluctant affections, sounding hesitant and nervous himself. Wonpil both wants and doesn't want him to just go back to normal. "Can I come in?"

Taking refuge in rudeness, Wonpil grumps, "I mean, the whole fucking village has already been in here," and rolls over to bury his face in a pillow.

Before Younghyun can reply, Dowoon says, "Jaehyungie-hyung hasn't!"

Probably, Wonpil thinks darkly, because he was talking to Younghyun about what an awful fun-ruiner Wonpil was.

Someone clears their throat, and then Younghyun says, "So. ...it has been pointed out to me that maybe I've been sending ... confusing signals. To you."

"Oh boy," Dowoon mutters, and his weight lifts off the bed. Wonpil's too busy trying to suffocate himself in his pillow to grasp after Dowoon, so all he can do listen to Dowoon shuffle out of the door and the brief, inaudible exchange of murmurs between him and Younghyun before the door closes.

Oh, god, Younghyun. Wonpil redoubles his efforts at pillow-enabled asphyxiation.

"Okay," says Younghyun, so quietly it must be to himself. Wonpil wonders if he's going to leave too. "I'll just talk to you like this, if it's easier."

 _No_ , Wonpil wants to say, _go away until I can think this through by myself and figure out how to return us to the state of being from half an hour ago._

Unfortunately he hasn't spontaneously developed the skill of telepathy or reversing time, so all Younghyun does is pad closer, his footsteps like pebbles being dropped into the bottomless pit of Wonpil's stomach. The shift of displaced air tells Wonpil that he's sat down next to the bed.

Wonpil tentatively looks out from his pillow, so that Younghyun's face fills the horizon of his right eye. He's smiling hopefully at Wonpil, and there's a familiar look on his face. It's the one he gets when he sees anything from a small kitten to a toddler wrapped up in winter padding to Dowoon singing to ... he hurriedly shuts off that train of thought.

"Oh, no, Wonpilie," Younghyun's voice is very soft and so low he's almost rumbling. "Crying? Because of ... me?" He's in the midst of reaching blindly for the tissue box on Wonpil's bedside table when he laughs a bit. "No, no, don't hide your face. I meant it when I said I like how you look no matter what, Pilie. I like you no matter what."

He doesn't mean to be contrary, but Wonpil has to bury his face into his pillow again at that. He's pretty sure his ears are red, anyway.

"I'm sorry," Younghyun says, "I'm not playing. I wasn't. Not when I'm complimenting you."

Wonpil can't help the snort, even as the stones in what passes for his emotional ramparts start shifting. There is only so much he can rationalise away as Younghyun just being a kind hyung who likes cute things.

For some reason, this makes Younghyun laugh a little. "Well, okay, but even when I'm playing around, I do mean it, Wonpilie."

"You're con _fu_ sing," Wonpil mutters into his pillow, then sits abruptly up, pillow clutched like a lifeline in his arms, to repeat it unmuffled.

Like this, Younghyun's looking up at him from where he's folded himself cross-legged onto the floor. There is an actual notepad lying in his lap, with the familiar thick black strikethroughs of Younghyun's drafting process. Wonpil's heart shudders in his chest.

"I can stop," Younghyun says, watching Wonpil closely. "If it would make how I ... stand clearer. For you. Um. Feel. About you."

Wonpil stares back down at him, any kind of denial crumbling away, realisation clicking into place. He should feel euphoric about this, probably, but he's instead feeling waist-deep in fog, head wrapped in cotton wool. Though that may also be the stuffed nose. "No, don't. I — you shouldn't change. Just because I'm stupid."

"You're not stupid," Younghyun sighs, and shifts his weight so he can kneel up and — Wonpil's heart trips over itself — wipe his face for him. "You've just known me for too long."

Wonpil takes a tissue from the box Younghyun has in one hand and blows his nose; it stings, feels raw, and probably looks deeply unattractive.

"I've seen too much," Wonpil agrees, trying to push the conversation back onto more familiar tracks.

The serious look on Younghyun's face doesn't go away, though. He'd look cold and aloof, if not for the warmth in his regard and the hand he's covering one of Wonpil's own with, like he's afraid Wonpil will just up and vacate his own bloody bedroom.

"It does mean I don't have to hide anything from you." Younghyun takes a deep breath. "And I hope you don't feel like ... like you have to hide anything from me anymore."

Horrifyingly, this makes the tears rise up in Wonpil's throat again. He bites his lower lip and purses his mouth in an attempt at self-control.

"Stop making me _cry_ ," he says crossly, tipping his head back and pinching the bridge of his nose when that doesn't work.

Younghyun gets up on the bed with him, mattress dipping beneath his weight. His face looms into view; the serious expression has broken open into slightly panicked concern.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he murmurs hurriedly, "How do I —" he breaks off, mouth firming up, and the next thing Wonpil knows, Younghyun's hands are on his face; Younghyun's fingers cradling the jut of his jaw; Younghyun's thumbs swiping at the tears on his cheeks.

Wonpil swallows hard and blinks harder.

They stare each other for a bit: Wonpil's face cradled in Younghyun's hands, turned up like a really snotty sunflower.

"Hyung," Wonpil says, when the tears seem to have receded. "I want to blow my nose."

"You're going to blow it right off," he says absently, but lets Wonpil go anyway. Cautiously, right in the middle of Wonpil doing his damned best to imitate an elephant, he continues: "You seem more comfortable now?"

"My nose hurts," Wonpil complains, crumpling up the used tissue in his hand and depositing it on his bedside table to deal with later.

"I'm sorry," Younghyun coos, his voice shot through with warm amusement. It settles like sunshine in Wonpil's veins. Then he leans in — Wonpil can tell he isn't even thinking about it consciously, because it happens too fast — and kisses the bump of Wonpil's nose.

They freeze like that when he leans back, and it's not like they haven't been this close before, but it's different like this. Charged with intent and truths finally brought to light.

Wonpil's eyes are crossing a little at this distance, to be honest, but it's still a little miracle, to see all the faint blemishes on Younghyun's face and fine lines around his eyes this close up without having to duck quickly away for appearance's sake.

"Okay?" Younghyun whispers, breath fanning out over his face.

Wonpil nods mutely, eyes wide and trying to focus on Younghyun, who's just getting closer again and — his eyes fall naturally shut when Younghyun presses a series of butterfly-light kisses up his cheek to the wet corner of his eye and back down to the twitching corner of his mouth.

"Ah," Younghyun sighs. He hasn't leaned back at all; Wonpil can feel the words being shaped against his lips. "Wonpilie, you have no idea how long I've wanted to do that."

The words take a while to filter through, then Wonpil blinks.

"Wait!" Wonpil pushes him back and tries not to get distracted by the solidity of his shoulders. Younghyun sits back on his heels, that maddening half-smile back on his face while he looks at Wonpil like — like — Wonpil refocuses. "What? How long? What?"

Younghyun blushing is a fairly rare sight, and Wonpil marvels at the pink of his cheeks, the way it creeps down his throat. "Long enough," he says evasively.

Wonpil lets it go; a little kindness in return is the least he can give Younghyun, after all. Struck by a sudden certain horror, he hopes against hope that whenever Younghyun's feelings for him ... started happening hadn't overlapped with Wonpil's tragic thing for Sungjin. He has a lot of interrogating of his memories to do.

"Oh. Okay. Well," Wonpil manages to get out, staring determinedly at a point somewhere over Younghyun's shoulder. "I like you too. Obviously."

Younghyun's grinning at Wonpil now, brimming over with infectious delight when he peeks at him.

"Obviously," Younghyun parrots, a little bit mocking.

This time, Wonpil feels only a lightness under his ribs when he slaps Younghyun in the arm.

The offending hand is caught, and Wonpil reeled in. He goes easily, turns the momentum to his own advantage and bowls Younghyun over.

"Why! Wonpilie!" he huffs out a laugh, though he's totally sliding an arm around Wonpil's waist so that they're tucked more snugly together. "How bold."

Wonpil thumps him in the side.

"Abuse," Younghyun says mournfully, "oh no."

He probably is about to go on at some length if the playfully theatrical tone he has taken on is any indication. Wonpil kisses him.

It starts out a little too hard, but then Younghyun makes a noise, tilts his face and gentles it, lips soft and fingers stroking up under Wonpil's sleep-shirt gentle and callused on his spine. This feels nice: unhurried, exploratory, lingering. A melty kind of warmth suffuses even his bones.

"Hyung," Wonpil says eventually, pulling back to a safe distance when his stomach gurgles. "I'm hungry."

"Ah," Younghyun says, after he very gratifyingly tries chasing after Wonpil for a moment and has to be pushed back down. "I did interrupt your breakfast, didn't I?"

"Yes. But — oh," Wonpil flops back down to bury his face in Younghyun's sternum. It's very comfortable here. "I don't want to go back outside."

Younghyun's laughter rumbles pleasantly into Wonpil, and then he's heaving them over, so that Wonpil slides off his chest to land in his bedclothes, a little stunned and a lot disgruntled.

"Shhh, shhhh," Younghyun climbs off the bed and stoops to poke his cheek, an old familiar gesture cast in new light. "Don't look like that. I'm just going to go brave Jae-hyung's judgemental face and make lunch."

"I just want my _ppang_ ," Wonpil says. Seeing the look on Younghyun's face, he adds, "And ... whatever you make?"

"The reason I eat so much," Younghyun says dramatically, "is because I'm eating for two."

Grinning, mischievous glee rising unstoppably in his chest, Wonpil asks, "You're ... pregnant?"

"Oh my god, Wonpilie!"

Wonpil bursts out laughing.

"You're so weird," Younghyun says fondly, bends lower to kiss him on the forehead.

His vision blurs a little, eyes crossing as he tries catching Younghyun's eyes from this close. Merrily, he teases, "But you _like_ me anyway."

"Not _anyway_." Younghyun's breath is coffee-scented and warm on Wonpil's face. It should be gross, but it isn't. Wonpil wonders at himself. "Not _in spite of_. Because."

The breath catches in Wonpil's chest; his heart stutters; there's a sudden pang deep in his nose, like — "Hyung," he says reproachfully, "you're going to make me start crying again."

"I'll kiss it away."

"You're not kissing me _now_."

Now that he's back within reach, Wonpil can't help but reach out again to hold Younghyun's face in place and stretch up the little bit to slide their mouths together again in a sweet, easy little _hello_. The skin under his fingers is warm and a little rough with stubble as Wonpil strokes with thumbs down Younghyun's cheeks, following the sharp arch of his cheekbones.

"Wonpil-ah..." his name comes out more a sigh than anything else. "You're going to use this against me forever now, aren't you?"

"I," Wonpil says, sliding his hands back and down to wrap his arms around Younghyun's neck and pull, "have no idea what you're talking about."

Set off balance, Younghyun has had to put a knee up on the bed, so that he's crouched half over Wonpil. So it's very simple to smile charmingly up at him, and then knock the knee out from under him so that he falls onto Wonpil.

"Whoa!" Younghyun barely stops himself from crushing Wonpil, landing on his forearms.

Wonpil, having narrowly escaped mortal peril, continues smiling charmingly up at him, and hooks his calves over Younghyun's.

"You —" Younghyun laughs helplessly. "Wonpilie, I —" and then he's diving in, and this time there's nothing soft or gentle about this kiss, or the way his fingers card through Wonpil's hair and grip hard.

They part wetly, panting a little and with Wonpil's legs having slid further up the backs of Younghyun's, only when Wonpil's traitorous stomach lets out another gurgle.

"I think those are my marching orders," says Younghyun, leaning back with an eyebrow raised.

"Don't," Wonpil whines, "stay here, I can starve."

Younghyun barks out a laugh, and then shakes his head, dipping down for a quick peck, like he can't quite bear to be parted either.

"I wasn't planning on this today," he says, a while later, having been thoroughly distracted, comprehensively dishevelled, and willingly pinned under Wonpil. Then he pauses and shakes his head, mouth pulling sideways the same way it had when they'd been working on _Like A Flowing Wind_ together. Wonpil was _such_ a fool. "I still don't quite believe it."

The note of incredulity in his voice strikes at Wonpil's very core, sets some deep-held belief that he was never going to find something like _this_ humming in resonance. But he has, and maybe it's because apparently it's been _long enough_ for Younghyun ...

"I wasn't planning on any of this at all," Wonpil tells Younghyun. He panics a little when Younghyun's brows furrow. "No, not like that, it's just ... who plans to fall in — um!"

Eyes wide, he abruptly swallowing words that seem a little too much, too fast, too soon, and stares mutely up at Younghyun, whose face has gone a little slack.

A small eternity passes, in which they seem to be caught, frozen, just staring at each other.

Then:

"Well," says Younghyun, voice dipping low and intimate into his chest. His lips have turned up in the corners in a small, private smile Wonpil has _never_ seen before and hopes to see again, and again, and again. "I'm glad we've both ended up here together, then."

**finis.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the ride!!! 
> 
> if this made you feel anything please leave a kudos, a comment, and/or [retweet this](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1228544566271389697). 
> 
> thanks, tiny fandom, and hopefully I'll see you with more pining soon. <3


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